Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

Padgett Powell, author of the acclaimed The Interrogative Mood and “one of the few truly important American writers of our time” (Sam Lipsyte), returns with a hilarious Southern send-up of Samuel Beckett's classic Waiting for Godot.

Truly a master of envelope-pushing, post-postmodern American fiction, in a class with Nicholas Baker and Lydia Davis, Powell brilliantly blends the sublime, the trivial, and the oddball in You and Me, as two loquacious gents on a porch discuss all manner of subjects, from the mundane to the spiritual to the downright ridiculous.

At once outrageously funny and profound, You and Me is yet another brilliant, boundary-bursting masterwork, proving once again that, “there are few writers who understand both the beauty and the absurdity of language as well as Padgett Powell” (Kevin Wilson, author of The Family Fang) and that, “Padgett Powell is one of the best writers in America, and one of the funniest, too” (Ian Frazier).

You and Me: A Novel won the James Tait Black Prize for Fiction.

Review:

“[Powell's] characters might be all talk and no walk, but what wonderful talk it is....Powell, in his recent work, has set his mind ablaze. And nothing but exquisite and deeply strange language is left to emerge from the ashes.” NPR

Review:

Review:

“Hilarious [and] absorbing....Powell can make the most barbed issues — the power of media, class resentment, private self-judgment, and dread of death — slither through dialogue of zany simplicity.” Vanity Fair

Review:

"Addictive, a plotless page-turner." Minneapolis Star Tribune

Review:

“A hilarious and engaging novel, with a strong sense of natural speech and lifes absurdities, by the author of the highly acclaimed The Interrogative Mood.” Booklist

Review:

“Wonderful....You and Me is by turns hilarious, depressing, gnomic, smutty, and just a far better Saturday night than anything to be had in Jacksonville and Baskersfield combined.” BookForum

Review:

“Deliciously human....Powell creates dialogue so deftly that we feel we are sitting alongside these men, somehow caught up in their discussion. Slyly funny, sometimes silly, irreverent, impudent, and brash, Powell has crafted a conversation that is comically American, with a free and wild heart.” Interview Magazine

Review:

"This is the hilarious work of a master in a late-career renaissance." Creative Loafing

Review:

"Extremely funny...reflective and poetic." Village Voice

Review:

“Sit back and enjoy the ride....The payoffs are marvelous....Powell gets deeper and funnier every time out.” Shelf Awareness

Review:

“There's a wild, improvisational spirit to Powell's literary jazz....You're urged on by hilarious...digressions, the musical lilt of the vernacular....Good fun.” GQ.com

Review:

"Great fun....Irreverent....Witty....Compelling." Kirkus Reviews

Review:

"Hilarious [and] moving." Oxford American

Review:

“Delightful....Ripe with juicy, drunken, rambling revelations....Powell's wholly distinctive voice grabs you by the ear and sets you to laughing.” Portland Mercury

Review:

“One of the South's most distinctive voices....Make[s] your brain dance in ways you never thought it could....There's a hallucinatory brilliance at work here...most of all, in the improbable and covert way that Powell cracks your heart.” Garden & Gun magazine

Review:

“These old boys are Southern storytellers, masters of the gothic twist, the wry comeback....Their voices become so vivid that reading the book begins to feel like eavesdropping — and a fine spell of eavesdropping it is.” Tampa Bay Times

Review:

“Padgett Powell's You and Me, mixed with 750 ml of fine bourbon, is the most fun you can have in many states without getting arrested. Braver, tougher, smarter than most of the fiction supposedly pushing the envelope. Why? Because it actually means something.” Gary Shteyngart, bestselling author of Super Sad True Love Story

Review:

“There are few writers who understand both the beauty and the absurdity of language as well as Padgett Powell....These are Nobel-big concerns, presented the way all grand truths should be delivered, with humor and tenderness.” Kevin Wilson, bestselling author of The Family Fang>

Review:

“This book is a rare thing: experimental writing with powerful narrative drive. I finished it feeling quieted—by its melancholic probing—and exhilarated by its comic style.” John Jeremiah Sullivan, author of Pulphead and Blood Horses

Review:

“Hilarious, bizarre and absorbing….Echoes of everyone from Walt Whitman to Will Rogers, vaudeville to Wittgenstein….Powell can make the most barbed issues — the power of media, class resentment, private self-judgment and dread of death — slither through dialogue of zany simplicity.” San Francisco Chronicle

About the Author

Padgett Powell is the author of five novels, including The Interrogative Mood and Edisto, which was nominated for the National Book Award. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Harpers, Little Star, and The Paris Review, and he has received a Whiting Writers Award and the Rome Fellowship in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He lives in Gainesville, Florida, where he teaches writing at MFA@FLA, the writing program of the University of Florida.

"Review"
by NPR,
“[Powell's] characters might be all talk and no walk, but what wonderful talk it is....Powell, in his recent work, has set his mind ablaze. And nothing but exquisite and deeply strange language is left to emerge from the ashes.”

"Review"
by Vanity Fair,
“Hilarious [and] absorbing....Powell can make the most barbed issues — the power of media, class resentment, private self-judgment, and dread of death — slither through dialogue of zany simplicity.”

"Review"
by Booklist,
“A hilarious and engaging novel, with a strong sense of natural speech and lifes absurdities, by the author of the highly acclaimed The Interrogative Mood.”

"Review"
by BookForum,
“Wonderful....You and Me is by turns hilarious, depressing, gnomic, smutty, and just a far better Saturday night than anything to be had in Jacksonville and Baskersfield combined.”

"Review"
by Interview Magazine,
“Deliciously human....Powell creates dialogue so deftly that we feel we are sitting alongside these men, somehow caught up in their discussion. Slyly funny, sometimes silly, irreverent, impudent, and brash, Powell has crafted a conversation that is comically American, with a free and wild heart.”

"Review"
by Creative Loafing,
"This is the hilarious work of a master in a late-career renaissance."

"Review"
by Village Voice,
"Extremely funny...reflective and poetic."

"Review"
by Shelf Awareness,
“Sit back and enjoy the ride....The payoffs are marvelous....Powell gets deeper and funnier every time out.”

"Review"
by GQ.com,
“There's a wild, improvisational spirit to Powell's literary jazz....You're urged on by hilarious...digressions, the musical lilt of the vernacular....Good fun.”

"Review"
by Portland Mercury,
“Delightful....Ripe with juicy, drunken, rambling revelations....Powell's wholly distinctive voice grabs you by the ear and sets you to laughing.”

"Review"
by Garden & Gun magazine,
“One of the South's most distinctive voices....Make[s] your brain dance in ways you never thought it could....There's a hallucinatory brilliance at work here...most of all, in the improbable and covert way that Powell cracks your heart.”

"Review"
by Tampa Bay Times,
“These old boys are Southern storytellers, masters of the gothic twist, the wry comeback....Their voices become so vivid that reading the book begins to feel like eavesdropping — and a fine spell of eavesdropping it is.”

"Review"
by Gary Shteyngart, bestselling author of Super Sad True Love Story,
“Padgett Powell's You and Me, mixed with 750 ml of fine bourbon, is the most fun you can have in many states without getting arrested. Braver, tougher, smarter than most of the fiction supposedly pushing the envelope. Why? Because it actually means something.”

"Review"
by Kevin Wilson, bestselling author of The Family Fang>,
“There are few writers who understand both the beauty and the absurdity of language as well as Padgett Powell....These are Nobel-big concerns, presented the way all grand truths should be delivered, with humor and tenderness.”

"Review"
by John Jeremiah Sullivan, author of Pulphead and Blood Horses,
“This book is a rare thing: experimental writing with powerful narrative drive. I finished it feeling quieted—by its melancholic probing—and exhilarated by its comic style.”

"Review"
by San Francisco Chronicle,
“Hilarious, bizarre and absorbing….Echoes of everyone from Walt Whitman to Will Rogers, vaudeville to Wittgenstein….Powell can make the most barbed issues — the power of media, class resentment, private self-judgment and dread of death — slither through dialogue of zany simplicity.”

Powell's City of Books is an independent bookstore in Portland, Oregon, that fills a whole city block with more than a million new, used, and out of print books. Shop those shelves — plus literally millions more books, DVDs, and gifts — here at Powells.com.